


its ancient wide walls

by scrhaiser



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, written for hooso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrhaiser/pseuds/scrhaiser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times they raced, and one time they didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	its ancient wide walls

**Author's Note:**

> “Thus with good hope and happy heart  
> they took their leave and began to ride homeward  
> toward Thebes, with its ancient wide walls.”
> 
> -Geoffrey Chaucer (trans. Peter Beidler), The Canterbury Tales, The Knight’s Tale, lines 1020-1022
> 
> Written for [Hooso 2014](http://hooso.tumblr.com/), bonus round two, prompt: Speed.

**1.**  
Reyna has been running the fastest four hundred of New Seneca High for the last two years and she doesn’t intend to stop now.

  
“Whoever she is, she’s got nothing at me,” she tells Annabeth at lunch.

  
“I’m just saying,” her friend says, eyeing the cafeteria pizza with distaste. “I’ve heard that at her old school she played volleyball and ran track- different seasons, wherever she’s from. The volleyball team she was on? As a freshman, on varsity? They lost in the state quarterfinals. If she’s giving that up to run around in circles…”

  
Reyna intends to go all the way to the state finals this year, and no one, not even an upstart transfer student sophomore by the name of Piper McLean, is going to stop her.

 

Reyna wins the four hundred at the first meet and Piper says, “Not bad.”

  
Reyna wins at the second meet and Piper, panting, slaps her on the back and says, “Damn, Reyna, I think I’m going to throw up.” She’s forced Reyna to shave half a second off her time.

  
Piper wins at the third meet because Reyna is coughing out her lungs and drinking a lot of soup. She is smug nevertheless, saying “Maybe next time, old lady.”

  
Reyna wins at conference and sectionals (Piper takes second and fourth in the two hundred) and she’s so high on adrenalin and disbelief, the team surrounding her and cheering, she doesn’t respond when Piper asks, “Want to go lunch with me?” It takes her two minutes to realize what Piper’s said (was that lunch or crunch or munch), and by that time, she can’t find her anymore.

 

At state, walking down to the hotel lobby, her second place trophy in her hands, she clumsily asks, “Come to lunch with me?”

  
Piper looks at the questionable hotel restaurant and scrunches her nose. “Want to make out in my room instead?” she asks with a razor sharp grin.

  
They only last until the elevator doors close.

 

 

 **2.**  
“We’re going to run their little punk asses into the dirt,” her sister growls, tossing her smooth black hair over one shoulder and experimentally drawing her bow. Piper knows it’s no coincidence she’s aiming at the Stolls.

  
“Or,” Piper says to Drew, pushing her sister’s elbow so her aim shifts, “we could just win and accept the glory and fewer chores.” Piper reaches up to scratch her eyebrow, but Drew swats her hand away from her face.

  
“No touching. We’re going to grind them to dust,” she proclaims, “and we’re going to look like fucking warrior queens while we do it.” Drew had spent at least fifteen minutes working on Piper’s eyes- palette this and concealer that and far too many types of makeup brushes. Piper does have to admit - it works. Her eyes are sharp enough to slice off fingers.

  
She looks nervously around the stable. Their chariot isn’t nearly as deadly looking as everyone else’s- in fact, it looks downright ordinary: simple brown wood reinforced with metal, the only adornment an “A” painted in blue sparkly nail polish on the front. But Drew seems to have murder on her mind, and Piper has no choice but to go along with it. As it is, she wouldn’t mind not having to not do dish duty for two weeks. Reyna is racing, too, though she races because the honor of Camp Jupiter has been called into question and not because she wants to not wash dishes. She and Frank are staying the weekend and Annabeth had challenged them, saying, “Why don’t you show us what Romans are made of?” Loudly. Over dinner. Smirking.

  
Piper can’t help staring, a little bit. Reyna has traded her purple cape and golden armor for a black shirt, jean shorts, and battle greaves; she wears them very well.  
“Oi!” Drew snaps her fingers in front of Piper’s face. “We have a chariot race to race! Focus, McLean!” She follows Piper’s line of sight before Piper can shift her gaze away from Reyna’s very, very nice ass. “Oh- really? Seriously, Piper- that’s the enemy!” She grabs Piper’s face and stares her in the eyes. “The enemy. Win now, stare later. Think of kitchen duty. I just gave you a manicure and you’re going to ruin it on nasty dishes if we don’t win.”

  
“Meep,” is all Piper can say before Drew pulls her into the chariot and snaps the reins. Horns blare as Drew hands the reins to Piper and readies her bow. The horses pull them into the sunlight and onto the racetrack.

  
“I’m sure your Roman girlfriend will be very impressed when we win,” Drew whispers from behind her.

  
“Shut up,” Piper hisses back, her face heating. The Hermes chariot is the only thing between her and Reyna.

 

“I’ll set you up with her if you win this for us.”

  
“Shut up!” Piper says again.

 

The race begins, the crowd roars, Annabeth’s chariot slices three axles before ten feet have passed, Piper narrowly misses being toasted by the Hephastus kids, Drew caws every time she makes a shot, Piper does not miss being splashed by Percy, Drew takes down three of Percy’s wheels for good measure, until it’s just. Them. Yards ahead of everyone else, crossing the white chalk finish line in a fantastic spray of dust and dirt and victory.

  
Piper screams along with Drew (but without all the profanity), and they raise their fists in the air.

  
“Take that, you motherfucking Romans!” Drew shouts at Reyna and Frank as the cross the finish line several seconds after and Annabeth’s chariot limps across the line half a minute later, the only others to finish.

 

Never let it be said Drew Tanaka doesn’t keep her word. Piper leaves the triumphant celebration to take a trip to the bathroom, and Reyna is standing outside, waiting for her, hidden from the glowing light of the fires.

  
“Hello?” Piper says. “I mean - hello.” She still has mud in her hair, courtesy of Percy and the horses.

 

“Hello. That was a, uh, good race.”

  
“Honestly, we only won because Clarisse broke the spokes on your front wheel.”

  
Reyna smiles at that and coughs - or maybe she chokes a little bit. “Your uh, sister, the one with the… dirty mouth, said, and I quote ‘Ask my fucking sister on a fucking date’ so uh- would you like to get coffee with me?”

  
“Sure,” Piper says, touching the golden laurels on her head with a smile. “I’d love to.”

 

 

 **3.**  
Reyna is pulling out of the McDonald’s drive-through with two cups of coffee (black for her, four sugars and three creams for Jason) when the panicky voice of a rookie cop comes over the radio. Nearby, then. “We have a 4-7-2 on Fourth and Forest!”

  
Reyna snorts. Rookies.

  
“Oh god- McLean and Valdez are robbing Kirtzel and Pritz!” It takes a minute for her to realize - diamond store, Piper McLean and Leo Valdez - and then she’s peeling out of the parking lot with her sirens blaring.

 

McLean and Valdez get away, of course, like they always do, but not before wrecking three different sports cars and setting a bridge on fire. They escape in helicopter, because it seems nothing they do can be without dramatic grand gestures.

 

One day, Reyna vows, one day.

 

 

 **4.**  
This is Piper’s Mitsubishi Evo: red as sin, has an engine that growls at the night, windows mirrored just so- you can see your open mouth as she speeds by, and zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds.

  
This Reyna’s Honda CR-V: the same silver one literally three people on her block own, has a small dent on the back where some idiot sixteen year old who didn’t get all his hours before getting his license bumped into it, does this weird stalling thing as it shifts gears right around 16.5 miles an hour.

  
It’s a good thing, then, that Reyna pulls cars apart to their bones and puts them back together with stronger hearts and angrier insides. It’s a good thing she isn’t the one meeting on smooth backroads where there aren’t any orange streetlights and the only cars for miles are you and your enemy. (She goes, of course. Always. To watch the creatures she’s created burn gasoline and lay black tracks down; footprints, reminders. Because she doesn’t race cars, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean she doesn’t like to watch them run.)

  
Piper races cars. Actually drives a clunky Jeep that’s perpetually in need of an oil change in real life (because racing isn’t real, it’s faster, it’s almost a dream), but when she races, she runs. Daredevil Queen McLean, some idiot with a Camaro nicknamed her. (Then again, this is the guy who calls himself the King of the Sea because he painted waves on the side of the car; but this isn’t California. The ocean is six hundred miles west and the largest body of water they’ve got is a lake fifteen feet deep, tops.) Piper McLean: always cutting corners a little too close and edging a little bit too fast, running and running and running, her Mitsubishi leaving everyone else in the dust. It’s beautiful to watch her fly, light slipping off her car like oil off glass.

  
Piper will burn out one day. It might in a ball of fire and glory, or it might be like everyone else, losing her touch on the gears, unable to connect with the machine and push it further, faster, harder.

  
Or maybe she’ll run, forever and ever and ever, nothing in front but open road and nothing behind but tire marks and fumes. Reyna likes the thought of that.

 

Maybe she’ll build a car for Piper McLean.

 

 

 **5.**  
“That flag is mine,” Piper says, pulling her helmet off by its blue plume. Reyna draws her sword. The Green Team’s flag stands at the top of the hill, nothing between them and their goal except each other. Then Piper grins, sharper and wickeder than a knife, and adds, “Just like your ass,” before sprinting up the hill.  
“What-” Reyna chases after her a moment too late, Piper already hoisting the flag in the air and whooping while recorded horn noises echo from the stereo system set up around the hill.

 

Damn it.

 

 

 **-1.**  
Oh god oh god I’m too late I’m going to be too late there’s too much blood hold on please hold on everything will be okay keep your eyes open stay with me look at me LOOK AT me stay awake just stay with me I’m going to have to pick you up now and run and it’s going to hurt I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry but I have to run okay I know it hurts just hold on please hold on-

 

-I love you.

 

Stay with me, please stay with me, I love you, it’s all going to be alright, I love you I love you-

  
(I need a doctor someone fucking get me a doctor please someone help me I need a doctor someone help please)

 

 

 **+1.**  
Everything in Reyna’s life is breaking.

  
Three weeks ago, her fourteen year old “Made in Chian” toaster caught fire, sending the last of the bagels to an early grave and forcing Reyna to confront the fact that there is something seriously wrong with her fire alarm. Two Thursdays ago her super called to tell her the central ventilation system was going to be undergoing construction for the next three weeks. For some inexplicable reason, her washing machine is making choking noises and dying. She has a D in her History of Law class.

  
Reyna stares up at the ceiling, Piper snoring on her shoulder, and realizes that the paint is cracking. She sighs. It’s 8:27 on a Saturday morning and the classes she teaches at the boxing center don’t start until two.

  
“We should go make coffee,” her girlfriend murmurs. “Race you.” She snuggles deeper under the blankets, a sleepy half-smile on her face. Reyna looks around her- their room. The curtains are half open, eight thirty in the morning light streaming through the frost dusted window. A basket of their dirty laundry is haphazardly shoved in the corner- since their washer started weeping water last Tuesday, neither of them have had the time to make a trip to the laundromat down the road. Reyna’s Criminal Psychology textbook is on top of a pile of Piper’s Art History homework; her empty cup of hot chocolate sits next to an empty tin of Oreos.

  
“Nah,” Reyna whispers, and kisses her.

  
Piper frowns. “Coffee.”

  
“Shower first? I’ll be quick.” God, she has so much she has to do- the electricity company messed up her bill and she has to call them and-

 

-Piper kisses her, pulling away her worries.

 

“Stay in bed,” she says, and Reyna does.


End file.
